AMD Radeon R9 M265X

The 28 nm AMD Radeon R9 M265X is an upper mid-range notebook graphics card based on the GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture. It was introduced in Spring of 2014 and supports up to DirectX 12. The underlying "Cape Verde" GPU features 640 unified shaders, a core clock of 625 MHz (up to 900 MHz with Boost) and a 128-Bit memory interface with 2 or 4 GB of VRAM at 1125 MHz.

Architecture

The "Cape Verde" GPU codename is based on the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture and is processed in a 28 nm lithography. The GCN architecture features 10 processing units for a total of 640 stream processors. In addition, the AMD Radeon R9 M265X sports 40 texture units, 64 Z/Stencil ROP units, 16 color ROP units and a 512 KB L2 read/write cache.

Depending on the thermal conditions of a notebook, the core clock rate of 625 MHz can be increased to up to 900 MHz with AMD's Boost technology. The AMD Radeon R9 M265X is compatible with the lastest PCIe 3.0 Standard.

Performance

Depending on the clock rate and benefits from Boost, the AMD Radeon M265X ranks in the upper mid-range of mobile graphics cards as of mid 2014. Performance is roughly in between a GeForce 840M and a GeForce GTX 850M (DDR3). As a result, this AMD GPU can run current titles smoothly up to 900p with medium to high settings. Graphical settings will have to be reduced significantly when playing very demanding titles like Crysis 3 or Far Cry 3.

Features

A well-known feature of the AMD Radeon R9 M265X includes the “Eyefinity“ technology, which allows the user to connect up to 6 displays simultaneously. For notebooks, however, this feature is almost always limited by the number of available display ports.

The mid-range GPU also supports the “Enduro” technology for power efficiency, which is the counterpart to Nvidia's “Optimus”. While idle or in low load scenarios (Office, Internet, etc.), the system will deactivate the dGPU in favor of the more low-power integrated GPU.

The M265X also features the “Mantle” graphics API for gamers. This programming interface has been developed by the manufacturer as an alternative to Direct3D or OpenGL. Example titles with Mantle support include Battlefield 4, Thief, and The Sims 4 with more to come in the future.

With “App Acceleration”, AMD has also equipped the Radeon R9 M265X with technology for improving video quality and increasing application performance. However, support for OpenCL, DirectCompute, or DirectX video acceleration (DXVA) is required in order to use all described functions.

Power Consumption

With a TDP of about 35 to 40 Watt, the power consumption of the AMD Radeon R9 M265X ranges between the 840M (about 30 Watt) and the GTX 850M (~40 to 45 Watt). Thus, the graphics card is best suitable for 15-inch notebooks. Under low loads, automatic underclocking can save energy. When idle, the Enduro software can completely deactivate the card for additional power savings.

- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card

Game Benchmarks

The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailled information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.